But WAIT! It is rumored that Apple, whether they intended it or not, may be pulling a marketing rope-a-dope, the ,likes of which have not even been attempted since K-Fed pretended that “POPO ZAO “ was just a joke and that his real (read: good) album would be coming out at a later date.

It is rumored that Apple has had another version of the iPad in the works for some time. His other device is supposed to have a screen closer to 15” and an OS closer to what you would find on a Macbook Pro, rather than what you would find on a phone. In other words, this is going to be closer to a laptop replacement with a touch screen, i.e., something I might be interested in buying.

I really want to believe that this is true: I have been consistently amazed with the regularity of Apple’s advances over the years, and was not looking forward to a disappointment. If the rumors are true, I’ll pretend to be surprised when the new device comes out, I promise.

As I celebrate another birthday and reflect upon my youth, I realize how soft my generation has gotten. It used to be that to write a paper, one had to select a topic, go to the library, and find appropriate research materials using something called the Dewey Decimal System. Now all you have to do to achieve the same thing is to plug a few search terms into a search engine without leaving the comfort of your own home. Even worse was having to actually *read* through a lot of the material in order to even know whether or not it was even relevant to your paper. “Ctrl+F” has pretty much solved that little problem.

The absolute worst part (and this may be a little bit more specific to me, personally), was having to use a foreign language dictionary. I spent a lot of time in high school and college studying foreign languages, and spent hours of my life sweating over whether the translation of “wind” that I had used in a paper meant “air that’s moving fast” or “what you might do to a watch” (yes I had a watch that wound).

If I had had a product like Babylon Translation Software, I could have avoided many sleepless nights. I may have even gotten better grades. It’s a quick download, available in 19 countries over five continents. Learn how to say “show me the money” in every language on the planet!

It’s really amazing that anything ever got done at all.

Now, anyone, no matter how lazy they are, can skip the first 20 steps of the old process when it comes to getting the government to move on an issue. With mobile technology today, like the iPhone’s SeeClickFix app, anyone with a phone can send a picture of a problem, along with a detailed description and GPS coordinates, straight to City Hall.

As of late, some major metropolitan governments have been making tons of city information (infrastructure info, etc.) available to mobile web developers. These developers are, in turn, presenting this data to users, allowing taxpayers to more easily access public, albeit obscure, information. This allows for accurate reporting of issues and elimination of confusion between the person bringing a problem to the government’s attention and the one who is dispatched to correct it.

With the adoption of new mobile apps and the creation of city-run twitter accounts, getting the government to act on a matter may soon become a completely different ball game. Instead of acting on every complaint that they get (which will now become more impossible than ever), democracy may begin to act on the complaints with the most “diggs” or “likes”.

2010 is the year of affiliate marketing. Am I biased? Yes. Will 2011 be the year of affiliate marketing too? You betcha. Sure, everyone’s speculating about twitter and facebook, and their business models, but weren’t they clamoring about that last year as well? (And the year before?) It’s easy to get stuck on panache of social media or the mystique of mobile marketing and forget about the ease and relatively straightforward concept of performance based marketing.

At the end of the day, advertisers can spend their money across whatever medium they choose. Affiliate Marketing gives them a fairly straightforward equation for what they’re in store for. It’s a simple concept at the heart of it all: you get what you pay for. If you spend “x” dollars, you will receive “y” leads. At the end of the day, advertisers know what they paid for, they have actual evidence of their advertising dollars at work. Publishers (both individuals and networks) are happy because of the ease of entry into affiliate marketing, and the relative straightforward nature of it. They know what they’ll get paid, given a course of action by a consumer.

Is affiliate marketing the end-all-be-all I’m probably making it out to be? Well, no, but it’s certainly a highly effective piece of any online marketing pie. Go ahead gurus (I said I was biased from the beginning), make your predictions, tell us what we should focus on in 2010. I’ll be here, sticking to what works.

Accenture may have the right idea here: most of the world doesn’t know what they do, aside from sponsoring Tiger. These other brands have a tangible product , to which Tiger may bring attention, but from whose quality he certainly can’t detract (Gatorade’s drinks will still taste the same no matter what they do with Tiger’s contract).

I think it would be foolish for these brands to leave Tiger’s side now. After all, they aren’t likely to find a bigger star, and even if they find one in another sport, his career won’t be as long as that of a golfer. And after this blows over, he’s likely to remember who stood by him and who didn’t.

This is troubling for a couple of reasons. First, one has to wonder what criteria Google will use to determine the legitimacy of advertisement. Would Colgate and Crest fall under the tooth-whitening umbrella? Will Google be testing the products to determine the validity of an advertiser’s claims? Will they be relying on consumer complaints? If so, how many cases of buyer’s remorse will it take to earn a permanent ban?

The problem is that there is almost a guarantee of false positives. It may just be a statistic, or the cost of doing business as far as Google is concerned, but honest affiliates will be put out of business. How did Google become judge and jury? Furthermore, it is hard to believe that they will forever turn down advertising dollars from powerhouses such as Blockbuster, Netflix and Nutrisystem. Not all continuity systems are evil and one has to wonder where Google will draw the line between what is acceptable and what isn’t. The shame is that a few affiliates may learn where the line is the hard way: with a lifetime ban.

Google’s attempt to clean house may end up backfiring on them, as this shift could just send a slew of advertisers to competing search engines. It will be exciting to see how this shakes out.

We’re sure you all want to know how this phenomenon began. Well, Shop.org created a site called CyberMonday.com which is a super affiliate with over 650 leading retailers. On Cyber Monday of 2008 alone, the site had 2.4 million visitors and generated over $12 million in sales during that year’s holiday season. In order for retailers to be listed on the site, they must have an affiliate program on Commission Junction, Linkshare or the Google Affiliate Network.

J.C. Penny Co. and Sears Holdings Corp. aren’t the only ones that have something to offer on Cyber Monday. Here at Blue Phoenix Media, we’ve got some hot revenue generating offers such as Tassimo Direct, Mail by Santa, Gevalia, Fun Mobile and Walk Fit that will for sure increase anyone’s ROI during this holiday season.

Cyber Monday is just another reflection of the power, strength and versatility of affiliate marketing and we’re glad to be able to be part of this unstoppable shopping trend!

  We are pleased to announce that Blue Phoenix Media Inc. will be in full effect at this year’s Ad Tech New York City event!  This action packed conference will be taking place from November 4th-6th at the Jacob Javits Center.  Some presenters include Jimmy Wales who is the founder of Wikipedia, WPP’s Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell and Jonathan Miller who is the Chief Digital Officer of News Corporation.  Other speakers will be coming from companies such as MTV Networks, Walmart.com, Google, and Hyundai to name a few.  The conference will include over 200 speakers, more than 60 value driven panels and the expo will feature 250+ exhibitors, including ourselves. 

Aside from Blue Phoenix Media being known for its affiliate network which is comprised of over 200 advertisers and 3,000 active publishers, we also boast 20+ exclusive web properties to maximize brand awareness that we’ve built and own as well as various Education Portals that generate quality leads.  Although our most successful verticals are Education, Consumer Products and Health and Pharmaceuticals, we offer campaigns in over 20 other verticals.  Alongside our proprietary lead generation technology, we have a Coreg platform to serve into registration pages to monetize websites.

Other than some remarkable and well experienced speakers, you’ll find our staff of affiliate managers at the upcoming Ad Tech NYC event.  Talk about another great reason to go, right?  Our CEO Amy Sheridan and COO Malaika Schmidt, founders of Blue Phoenix Media, Inc. will be present as well.   If you would like to set up a meeting in advance, please email meetings@bluephoenixmedia.com.  So, if you haven’t been hiding under a rock, you know better than to not miss this event.  Stop by booth #2118.  See you there!